Author Hendryx was 'salty' character

Lee Point resident gained fame with novels, magazine series

It's unlikely the youngsters who swim each summer at Hendryx Part in Bingham Township know much about the man for whom the park is named.

But they may be familiar with the characters James B. Hendryx created while writing from his Lee Point home, which he purchased in 1921 along with 360 wooded acres.

Hendryx, a great-grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth U.S. President, wrote 75 novels and hundreds of short stories during his lifetime. Many were written at a small cottage he build 1/4 mile from his home.

An avid fisherman, hunter, outdoorsman and adventurer, Hendryx was a 'salty' character who based much of his writing on hi experiences as a cowboy and as a prospector at the tail end of the Alaskan Gold Rush.

Born in Sauk Centre, Minn., on Dec. 9, 1880, Hendryx was the sone of the local newspaper editor and spent many of his boyhood days with Claude Lewis, a brother of the famous novelist Sinclair Lewis.

After graduation from high school Hendryx attended law school at the University of Minnesota in 1899 but dropped out after deciding law wasn't for him. He later said he had learned "enough law to keep me out of trouble."

Hendryx then began "punching cattle" on a ranch near Chinook, Minn. While riding the range he lived the life of a cowboy, which included encounters with outlaws. It is said he was familiar with Kid Curry and his brother Lonnie, members of the Wild Bunch, a train-robbing gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

"After he worked in Montana, he and another fella went north and paid for their trip to Alaska playing poker," according to Hermione (Mitti) Swartz, Hendryx' eldest daughter who now lives at the Hendryx home on Lee Point. His other daughter, Betty Loomis, is also a Lee Point Resident [now living in Florida].

Although the adventurous pari had hoped to cash in on the gold rush, they came up emptyhanded, spending much of their time cutting wood and trying to keep warm.

After 14 months in Alaska, Hendryx returned to the states and worked in Kentucky before taking a reporting position at the Cincinnati Enquirer.

It was after an experience at the Enquirer that Hendryx left the newspaper business to pursue a career writing fiction. He had been assigned to cover an execution at the prison in Joliet, Ill. Through his own cleverness or a copy editor's carelessness, this headline appeared in the morning edition following the hanging: "Jenkins Jerked to Jesus at Joliet".

His first novel, The Promise, was published in 1915.

Hendryx became familiar with the Grand Traverse area while on a fishing trip with the Traverse City writer Harold Titus. In 1921 he purchased the 3-story lodge, which was built as the centerpiece of a planned lakeshore resort and moved to Lee Point with his wife, Hermione, and three children.

Hendryx is best known for the stories of Connie Morgan, boy adventurer, which were serialized in American Boy magazine. In his later years, he wrote the Black John stories of the Yukon, which centered around Black John Smith, leader of an outlaw community on Halfaday Creek who dispensed his own brand of justice to those less scrupulous then he.

His books have been published in Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and German. And in 1921 a movie based on The Texan starred Tom Mix.

When he wasn't writing, Hendryx hunted and fished from the first of June to the end of November. He also broke wild horses in a corral that he built on the Lee Point Property.

As time went on, and the Suttons Bay area became less secluded, Hendryx purchased a cottage on Basswood Lake, north of Thessalon, Ontario, where he took his family on summer vacations.

The essence of Hendryx' crusty character was highlighted in the national television show This is Your Life, where in May, 1956, he appeared wearing a broad-brimmed Stetson hat which was almost a trademark for him.

His childhood friend, Claude Lewis, appeared on the show and recalled Hendryx' response when he was asked about the difference between his writing and the writing of Sinclair Lewis. "He said Sinclair gets $1 a word and I get a penny a word," Lewis said.

Also mentioned during the show was a statement made by a niece of Hendryx during a family dinner: "I think God must be a lot like Uncle Jim, but he doesn't swear as much."

At one time Hendryx was known as a heavy drinker, a habit picked up during his stay in the Yukon. But he stopped drinking in 1930 after "taking the cure" at a center in Illinois.

"When I was little I remember him playing poker and drinking," Mrs Swartz said. "But he never drank after that."

Mrs. Swartz said one of the fondest memories of her father was his love of children and how he enjoyed taking them camping. So it seems fitting that the property he and his wife deeded to the county more than 35 years ago continues to be enjoyed by neighborhood families.

Readers from all over the world live out their fantasies through Hendryx' characters, each of which had a little bit of the author's zest for life, as reflected in his reply to one of the last questions he was asked on This is Your Life:

If there was anything he'd do differently if given the chance to live life over, Hendryx, then 76, said, "I'd do twice as much of it."